In 1914, Canada entered the Great War when Britain declared war on Germany on behalf of the British Empire. Despite its status as a relatively small nation with little military tradition, Canada made major contributions to the Allied war effort. Over 600,000 men enlisted to fight out of an overall population of 7,000,000.[1] Canadian troops quickly acquired a fearsome reputation on the European front and earned a reputation as courageous and aggressive fighters. In his memoirs, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George wrote that “Whenever the Germans found the Canadian Corps coming into the line they prepared for the worst.”[2]

The famous poem "In Flanders Fields" was penned by Canadian medic John McRae and another Canadian soldier, private George Lawrence Price, is recognized as being the last soldier killed in the war.[3]

Canada's contributions to the war effort furthered official and unofficial independence. Prime minister Sir Robert Borden was a member of the Imperial War Cabinet, and he greatly influenced the Imperial War Resolution IX from 1917, which stated that the dominions were autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth. At the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919, it was on equal footing with the other victorious nations.

Since 1970

1982 Constitution

The BNA Act was later amended in 1982 by the Constitution Act of 1982. Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, also established the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as part of the Constitution Act. The Charter sets clear, fundamental freedoms for all Canadians. It has been cited in thousands of court challenges and is the fundamental legal document supporting the national legalization of same-sex marriages and the prevention of government intervention regarding abortion. Dominion Day was also changed to Canada Day in the process, always celebrated on July 1, unless that day falls on a Sunday, when it is celebrated the following Monday.

1993 Election

The 1993 Canadian general election was an extraordinary one that saw the collapse of a once stable two-party-plus system and the emergence of a less stable one-party dominant system. The governing Progressive Conservative party went down to the most crushing defeat of any governing party in Canadian electoral history, and two new parties displaced two old ones. A new conservative party based in Alberta, the Reform Party, captured the political right. The strategic interests of both of the two new parties, Reform and the independent Bloc Québécois (active only in Quebec), combined to undermine the integrative role that Canadian political parties have traditionally served.[4]

Bumsted,J.M. The Peoples of Canada: A Pre-Confederation History; and The Peoples of Canada: A Post-Confederation History. (2004). college textbook

Conrad, Margaret, and Alvin Finkel. Canada: A National History. (2003), college textbook.

Conrad, Margaret, and Alvin Finkel, eds. Foundations: Readings in Post-Confederation Canadian History. and Nation and Society: Readings in Post-Confederation Canadian History. Pearson Longman, 2004. articles by scholars

Creighton, Donald; A History of Canada: Dominion of the North 1958, 626 pp online edition, textbook

Hallowell, Gerald, ed. The Oxford Companion to Canadian History (2004) 1650 short entries

Conrad, Margaret, and Alvin Finkel. Canada: A National History. Pearson Education Canada, 2003.

Conrad, Margaret, and Alvin Finkel, eds. Foundations: Readings in Post-Confederation Canadian History. and Nation and Society: Readings in Post-Confederation Canadian History. Pearson Longman, 2004. articles by scholars

Creighton, Donald; A History of Canada: Dominion of the North 1958, 626 pp online edition, textbook

Dickason, Olive Patricia. Canada's First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times (2001) excerpt and text search

Ontario

Celebrating One Thousand Years of Ontario's History: Proceedings of the Celebrating One Thousand Years of Ontario's History Symposium, April 14, 15, and 16, 2000. Ontario Historical Society, 2000. 343 pp.

Grabb, Edward, James Curtis, Douglas Baer; "Defining Moments and Recurring Myths: Comparing Canadians and Americans after the American Revolution" The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, Vol. 37, 2000

Ontario since 1869

Cameron, David R. and White, Graham. Cycling into Saigon: The Conservative Transition in Ontario. (2000). 224 pp. Analysis of the 1995 transition from New Democratic Party (NDP) to Progressive Conservative (PC) rule in Ontario

Kealey, Linda, Ruth Pierson, Joan Sangster, and Veronica Strong-Boag. "Teaching Canadian History in the 1990s: Whose 'National' History Are We Lamenting?," Journal of Canadian Studies 27 (Summer 1992):

Thorner, Thomas, with Thor Frohn-Nielsen, eds. "A Few Acres of Snow": Documents in Pre-Confederation Canadian History, and "A Country Nourished on Self-Doubt": Documents on Post-Confederation Canadian History, 2nd ed. (2003).